


Died On the Ground To Rise Anew

by gala_apples



Series: An Alphabet of Teen Wolf Crossovers [23]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arguing, Car Accidents, Crossover, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Mutant Powers, Near Death Experiences, X2: X-Men United (2003), telepathic torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 04:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3714865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is in the middle of the woods watching the Pack do their thing, like they do every summer day, when it happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Over a decade later and I still have feelings about X2. Man. The first chapter is during X2, the second chapter is post-movie.

Stiles is in the woods when it happens. Of course he’s in the woods. He’s always in the woods. School, Derek’s loft and the woods are his primary locations these days.

One second he’s meditating in an argument between Erica and Boyd about whether or not pulling hair is cheating, with Isaac’s curly-ass self listening in. The next he’s writhing on the ground in complete fucking agony. 

Logically he knows there are roots and all sorts of shit underneath him - the kind of shit he’d normally complain about poking into his delicate spine when one of Derek’s Pack got it into their head to teach the human self defense- but he can’t feel any of it now. You don’t feel papercuts if your foot is being amputated. It’s like there are thirty guys standing in a circle around him, but instead of some nice kinky bukakke scene, they’re all heaving sledgehammers down onto him. Every inch of his skeleton is shattering at once. And paired nicely with the agony, like fava beans and chianti to human liver, is the sensation of his eardrums exploding. It’s the shrillest tinnitus he’s ever had, and it’s loud as a foghorn.

There’s only one explanation. Either Erica or Boyd is one of those rare True Alphas Stiles has read about in the translated Bestiary, and his mediating that was more like goading, if he’s being honest, pissed them off. Enough so that they did an air bite at him but skin got in the way, and his body is rejecting the change. He always knew he wasn’t meant to take the bite. He’s the Xander, and he’s okay with that. Or maybe he’s the Anya, the funny inappropriate one who dies horribly in the end.

He’s not sure what would be scarier; dying like this or dying so suddenly he feels nothing. But being aware of his death means nothing if he can’t react to it, say his goodbyes. And there’s no question about it, Stiles isn’t in control of his body any longer. It makes a dark, brutal sense. He can’t feel anything except every nerve misfiring in excruciating pain. Why would those scorched synapses work? 

Suddenly he’s looking at sky and flesh, not the blackness of eyelids clamped with pain that no longer respond. It takes a second to realise that the flesh is Derek. The Alpha’s pried his eyelids open. And that’s not the only thing he can see. He fell at just enough of an angle that he can see Scott struggling mightily as he’s held back by Boyd. Open mouthed too, he’s probably shouting. Stiles might be shocked and thrilled by Scott’s panicked filthy mouth, if he could hear anything. Awww, Scott wants to kill Erica for murdering him. Stiles has always hoped someone would care enough to avenge him.

Derek’s saying something. Stiles taught himself to read lips years ago. When he was a kid the Sheriff’s office made a better babysitter than his slowly worsening mother. None of the deputies would let him eavesdrop, but almost every interesting conversation was held behind a glass wall. The solution was obvious. It’s hard to concentrate enough to put the skill into practice when he’s hurting this badly. All he really catches is ‘safe’. But it must be a key word, because a moment later he’s got four betas and an alpha crouching around him, laying on hands. One by one they collapse onto their collective asses from the overwhelming pain, but none actually stop. It’s more than Stiles would have guessed Boyd cared for him. The pain doesn’t dissipate, not even with five hands on him, but it lessens enough that he’s not traitorously begging for death. Good. He’d hate to go out that way. Stilinskis aren’t quitters. Mom refused to sign a DNR to her last days of coherence.

“Don’t bite your next human,” Stiles concentrates on saying. It’s unlikely that his vocal cords are working when none of his other body parts are, but on the off-chance they will, they’re important last words. Allison might not seppuku like her mom, but she probably won’t get lucky like Lydia either. He doesn’t have to say _I love you_ or _take care of my dad_ , Scott knows and Scott will. But with him dead, who else is there to champion human rights?

Derek presses his face against his jawline. Stiles can feel Derek’s jaw moving, but he still can’t hear. Then Derek tries again, and puts his wolf into it. The alpha’s growl somehow cuts through the shrill whine. Maybe it’s something about high frequency and low frequency. He’d understand if he could Google it, he’s always been able to read himself into understanding. It’s really annoying to know he’ll die with questions. Maybe there will be an afterlife and he’ll get enlightened. He kinda wishes he’d asked Peter what death was like, now. He hadn’t wanted to know, with Mom, if there was nothing. It would be nice to reassure himself now.

“This wasn’t us.”

Interesting. Possibly a lie and ultimately irrelevant to his goddamn corpse, but interesting. Stiles attempts to roll onto his side. His body won’t do it, but he should still try. Any second now he’s going to start barfing up black goo, and he doesn’t want to stain his shirt. He loves this shirt. It’s his favourite shirt. He wants to be buried in this shirt. It’s in his last will and testament doc on his google account, along with a bunch of other stuff that won’t be legally enforceable but hopefully his dad will follow.

“Fuck your shirt!” Erica growls. “Tell us what’s wrong!”

Huh. He really thought he was screaming with effort. Figures he’d be a babbler until the end.

“There is no end! Derek!” Isaac snarls. Stiles is kinda touched. He didn’t think Isaac cared so much.

Scott’s talking a stream. Stiles can see his lips going. They’re too fast to read, and the pitch is too airy and reassuring to hear through the tinnitus perforating his ears. Stiles appreciates the loving babble anyway. He knows what’s being said, even if he can’t figure it out. 

Then it stops. From ninety to zero in a second flat, the torture just...stops. Just flicks off like a switch. 

Stiles has a brief second to enjoy the cessation of pain. No more agony, and no more stupid fucking noise. It’s almost better than the lack of pain. Stiles hates when his ears ring. The smart next step is getting checked out at the hospital for reasons why whatever just happened did happen. What he wants to do instead is go home and download the best bassy music he can and dance around in his bedroom. 

After that second of relief and preoccupation he hears it. All of it. Scott is screaming. So is Boyd. Erica is sobbing. So is Isaac. And if he hears the noise Derek is making ever again he’ll puke. But he can’t puke now. He has to figure this out. Maybe there are pixies in the forest, and their sting causes pants wetting pain until the venom is absorbed. Or maybe he’s patient zero of a magical pain plague and everyone he touches or they touch will be infected.

Stiles only has a few options. He can’t pain suck them into partial coherency. If they’re accidentally in a pixie grove he can only drag them out one at a time. And if it’s a contagion he shouldn’t get them into open air. 

He gives himself a moment to think, then decides. They shouldn’t get worse if he leaves them, and they can endure while he gets answers.

He calls Deaton as he sprints towards his car. If he explains what’s going down, Deaton might have a solution by the time he gets to the vet’s. They can use the parking lot as a safe drop zone. Deaton can put the potion or whatever in the middle and retreat back inside before Stiles gets out of the Jeep.

Except Deaton doesn’t answer. The resource pool beyond that is limited. Mr Argent, but Stiles doesn’t know what time it is in France. Lydia’s kept a PDF of the Bestiary, and she’s read a lot more of it because Stiles hasn’t finished teaching himself Latin yet. And then there’s-

Stiles whips around in the middle of a shrub and starts for the Hale house. Peter’s skeevy, but he knows enough to raise himself from the dead through someone’s dreams, and he kind of helped with the kanima. If he knows something he’s closer than anyone else.

But it’s useless. Before Stiles even begins to navigate the structurally weak porch he can hear Peter screaming. Stiles turns and heads back for the Jeep. He just has to hope it’s a beasty thing, not a spell thing. At least now he knows he can get out of the car. He’s not a walking vector if Peter has it. Peter hasn’t touched Stiles since the offer to turn him.

Driving through the town is a horror show. Everywhere he looks people are writhing on the ground. The streets are a mess of endless pileups. Stiles has no choice but to drive on the shoulder, on the grass, half on curbs. He’s never been more grateful for Roscoe being a Jeep than now. Any other vehicle and he’d be screwed. A pickup truck might handle the bumps but it’s got less maneuverability. Roscoe can take any awkward angle and squeeze through the end of one crash and the start of another.

He has a bad feeling about Lydia now. It looks like everyone has been infected. Even Dad isn’t answering his cell, or the station their public number. But he has to try. There could be, like, a pain predator the size of a blimp floating over Beacon Hills. This could still be something Stiles can do something about. He can’t stop and help the dozens of people slumped into airbags, can’t pick up spilled groceries or catch dogs fleeing from their owners with dragging leashes. He’s a good person, if not _Scott_ good, but there’s too much to triage. The most important thing to figure out what’s happening.

Stiles has only had an excuse to knock on Lydia’s door a few times. He never thought things would get worse than _did a werewolf attack you and Jackson_ and _lets all hallucinate at your birthday party_ , but this is worse.

By some miracle Lydia opens the door as he knocks on it frantically. Stiles has hope for a moment; she’s the first help source that’s actually responding. Then, in rapid succession he sees she’s crying and she buries her head in his armpit, trying to get away from the pain. Even with Scott in his life Stiles is bi enough and his unrequited crush longterm enough that this should be a top five moment. Like the sexy come on at the beginning of the year, the circumstances ruin it completely. And then there’s the matter of her words.

“Everyone is dying.”

Stiles grabs her by the shoulder and pries her away from his side. He looks Lydia in the face, like direct eye contact will make her change her tune. “What? No, they can’t be. I had it ten minutes ago and I’m fine now!”

“I can feel it. It’s everyone. Oh God, it’s everyone.” 

Lydia's hands raise to settle over her mouth. Not to muffle sobs, her tears are flowing silently. Maybe she’s nauseous. Stiles would be if he was a banshee who could feel the population dying around him.

“Lydia. Where’s the Beastiary? Maybe we can fix this. Maybe it’s dragon spores or something and we just have to blow it off people’s skin.” Stiles has no idea what he’s talking about, it sounds like complete crap coming off his tongue, but still. He has to try. If he’d quit too early before, Jackson would still be a kanima. And spores make sense for how it hit him before anyone else in the Pack. Random winds of chance. Literally. “Where’s-”

“Laptop’s in my room,” Lydia whispers through tight fingers.

“Okay, so you’ll send it to my phone, we’ll have a speed reading contest. We’ll figure-”

She shakes her head. “Can’t go upstairs.”

“What? Is the death knell making you all shaky? I can help you-”

“My mom’s upstairs,” she interrupts. And then she starts sobbing in earnest.

Yeah, okay, he can see how that’d be upsetting. Still, “better than out on the road, right? I mean she wasn’t in the bathtub or anything right?” Not that Stiles wants to think about what his own parent might have been in the middle of when the onset hit. “She fell down on carpet, probably? That’s pretty good. Better than a lot of alternatives, I think.” 

Stiles is torn between big picture and small picture. Small picture Lydia’s crying in front of him, and he should be comforting and make her stop doing that. If not for her, because she’s normally ruthless and badass and seeing her flip out is making his brain twitch. Big picture she’s sensing people slowly dying and if he doesn’t figure out why he suddenly got better and make it happen to everyone else, Beacon Hills could get decimated. In the actual definition of the word; one in every ten citizens dead. 

“I will be right back, I totally swear,” he promises, and runs for the stairs.

Ms Martin is in the middle of the hallway, curled up in mute agony around a laundry basket. Her fingers are clenched between the hard plastic webbing. It’s fucking terrible to skirt around her not once, but twice. But what the hell can he do? He has to bring the laptop back to the living room so he can search while making sure Lydia doesn’t start bleeding from the ears or something.

“She’s fine, she’s breathing, it’s okay,” Stiles starts shouting as he barrels down the stairs, lowering his volume as he makes it back to her. “Stop crying, she’s gonna be fine, she’s just in pain, but so was I and I got better. We just gotta figure out how I did. You ready to sit down and figure it out? You gotta stop crying though. Lydia you-”

Abruptly Lydia sags. If it wasn’t for Stiles’ quick reaction, she’d be crumpled on the floor. “It stopped. Oh God, thank you. It stopped, it stopped.”

“No death?”

Her laugh is bitter, her lips curled into a sneer almost as pretty as Jackson’s. “Dozens of deaths. But not planet wide destruction.”

Stiles can feel his eyebrows fly up of their own accord. “Planet wide?”

“I told you everyone.”

“I thought you meant everyone in Beacon Hills.”

“No,” she replies simply. Then she’s leaving the room, no doubt heading upstairs to check the wellbeing of her mother.

Jesus. Everyone on the fucking planet. It’s even more scary in retrospect. He doesn’t have long to think about it though. A ringing phone fills the room with noise. Stiles realises after a beat that it’s coming from his pocket, not the house. He presses accept without looking. Anyone that wants to talk to him immediately after a disaster like this is someone he wants to talk to.

“Stiles!”

Oh fuck, it’s his dad. Thank fucking Christ. Stiles is a perfect interpreter of his dad’s tones and moods. He’d say thanks to Mom’s untimely death he needed to be able to co-parent himself and protect his dad, but the truth is obsessively studying and caring for the people he loves has always been a trait of his. Everything Stiles needs to know about his dad’s relative safety and stress level can be plucked from the one word. Dad is bothered, but okay. Frankly, the rest of the world can go screw, as long as that stays true.

“Yeah dad?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, dad.”

“Look. I don’t know when I’m going to be home tonight. Whatever that was, a DARPA sonar project or something, it seems like half the county was driven off the road. We have a lot of work ahead of us. I’m not going to lie, we might be required to set up a quarantine. You have to promise you won’t try to skirt it.”

“Shit, really?”

It’s a sign of how preoccupied his dad is that he doesn’t even scold Stiles for swearing. “Until someone explains what the hell that just was, I have to assume the worst.”

“Okay dad.” He can’t exactly tell him it was supernatural, not science gone wrong. He doesn’t even know if it truly was. He didn’t even get the PDF open before it was over.

“Melissa might be busy too. You can sleep over, but answer the phone if either of us call.”

“Yeah, of course.” It’s the rule his dad and Scott’s mom have about their relationship and the realities of not being in the house most evenings. No one has embarrassing conversations about how Scott and Stiles might be exploiting the empty house and in return they stay in contact, no sneaking around. As far as Stiles is concerned, he and Scott have got the better deal.

“Love you son.”

“Love you too dad.”

About thirty seconds after he hangs up Scott bursts through the front door. The betas three and their shining leader are close behind. Stiles nearly collapses with the momentum that Scott mashes him with when he comes in for a hug. Stiles doesn’t let himself fall apart in his boyfriend’s arms. Not with Erica and Isaac and Derek watching. There will be time for that later, when they’ve got the McCall house to themselves. Still, there’s comfort to be taken from the strong grip.

“I was really scared,” Scott whispers into his ear. If the other werewolves can hear it, they do him the courtesy of not commenting.

“Me too buddy. Me too.”

But he can’t stay in Scott’s arms forever. With a heaping bowl of reluctance he takes a step back. That’s apparently Boyd’s cue to start talking.

“You took off because you wanted to fix it, right?” Stiles nods at the guy. He doesn’t want any of them to think he didn’t care about pack, but especially not Boyd. Boyd’s the only protege of Derek’s who isn’t an asshole. “Did you figure it out?”

“I barely got a chance to look at the Bestiary, but I don’t think it’s us. Didn’t you see running here? It affected everyone. Unless there’s way more supernatural and supernatural adjacent than we thought, it just doesn’t make sense. Dad thinks it’s a military weapon they tested too far from the base.”

“Really?” Erica asks.

“Not saying he’s right. Just that’s his theory.”

Erica opens her mouth to argue -probably for argument’s sake, that’s how he and her interact, for the most part- when all the werewolves look as one to the stairs. Lydia’s descending. 

“She’s okay. Unless there are side effects we don’t know about yet, and everyone’s going to die twenty four hours from now. But if that’s true, I’ll be sure to let you know.” Lydia laughs shakily.

“I’ll make tea for your throat,” Isaac mutters before leaving the room. Stiles wonders if he even knows where the kitchen is. He’s also not sure if Lydia’s supernatural scream actually physically affects her. Still, it’s a nice gesture.

“What do we do now?”

Erica’s question was aimed towards Derek, as per usual. The trio refer to their Alpha a lot more than Stiles can imagine ever looking to an authority for answers. Good thing he never accepted the Bite. But because Derek is generally completely crap with planning, it’s Lydia who answers her. “Watch the news, maybe? If it’s more than just Beacon Hills then there will be reports about it. CNN might know the demographics of the event.”

Stiles nods at Lydia. That makes sense. Situations are always easier to handle when a person has as much information as they can get.


	2. Chapter 2

The young man is wearing a uniform. It’s a lot flashier than his dad’s, so it’s probably higher up than Sheriff in the authority figure department, despite the person wearing it looking about nineteen. Part of Stiles was waiting on this moment. The other part of him dismissed it as too paranoid. Note to self if he lives through this- you can never be too paranoid.

“Before you try anything I want you to know you’re vastly underestimating how upset my allies will be when I’m kidnapped.” It’s pleasant to know it’s not a bluff. Over the last few days the Pack has made it pretty clear they care, starting with tracking him down to reassure him. “Do you really want to lose another dam?” Okay, _that’s_ a bluff. But what are the chances the next holding cell really is in a dam? And he’s pretty sure the Pack could tear him out of a normal prison.

“What? No. You can choose whether you come with me.”

 

Stiles laughs. A bit too soon for it maybe, the man could have a gun and not appreciate humour. But really? Who the hell offers this as a choice and expects to be taken up on it? Dumb people get laughed at. It’s just how Stiles is. “I’m gonna choose _not_ going with the creepy elite anonymous government agent tasked with searching out those who fell during the first pulse.”

Stiles starts to close the door. This conversation is over.

“Wait!”

Stiles continues to close the door. On the second “wait”, ice fills the divot of the lock as well as coating the frame a few feet above and below it. “I’m not one of Stryker’s agents. Shit. I messed this all up. Can I come in, and we can talk?”

Stiles figures what the hell. Unless he’s extremely self-loathing, this man isn’t working for the agency. He leaves the door open and lets the man follow him into the living room. Not that the first is a choice. Hopefully the sun will melt the man’s ice before Dad gets home. Otherwise he’s going to have to stand there with a lighter and get the job done himself.

“Let’s rewind.”

“What, do you have a rote speech?” Stiles asks, curling his legs under himself. The couch is a bit lumpy, so sitting on himself is the most comfortable position. It’s not the best offensive position, Derek and Erica would be ashamed, but as far as Stiles’ concerned it’s okay to appear a bit relaxed. He’s Scott’s anchor. His boy will notice clear across the county if he starts screaming.

“Yes, actually. I just wasn’t expecting you to be so paranoid.”

“Sheriff’s son, who researches for shits and giggles.” Stiles shrugs. “What can I say?”

“Okay, fair. Really should have factored the cop’s kid thing into this. I’m just gonna...” The man cuts himself off, clears his throat and puts on a smile. “I’m Bobby Drake. A mutant. It wasn’t safe for me at home, and when I was thirteen a man in a wheelchair pretended to be a guidance counselor to talk to me.”

“Know how that feels,” Stiles mutters.

Mr Drake looks at him with confusion in his eyes, but when Stiles makes no move to elaborate he continues. “He was, really. I mean it’s not his job technically, but he did what guidance counselors are supposed to do. He offered me hope, and a way to get out. There’s a school-”

“Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, yeah, I know.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s where Stryker's assault started, right? Research for fun, remember?”

“Yes, it was attacked. But we’re rebuilding, and we’re convinced the President we should be left alone. Your neighbour knows a teacher of ours. She called, said you needed help.”

“So she called you about the lone terrifying mutant that the small town’s about to turn on, and you only bring yourself to restrain me?” Rude, maybe. But Stiles can’t exactly say ‘I only needed help when I wasn’t sure if Alpha werewolves viewed mutants to be as threatening as kanimas, but they’re good so we’re good’.

Mr Drake frowns. “You should know well enough that you’re not dangerous.”

“I’m not? I’d kinda guessed, I couldn’t make anything elemental, or or my body protrude anything, or fly anything to me. Or heal, for that matter, but that’s not dangerous to others.”

“You haven’t manifested? I guess you haven’t had an event stressful enough.” 

Stiles can’t help it. He bursts into laughter. Loud, obnoxious, wild to the point of hysteria laughter. The longer it goes on, the more concerned Mr Drake starts looking. “You sure about that?” he finally gasps out. He’s got tears in the corners of his eyes. “Maybe my power is teleporting an inch to the left and I just didn’t notice.”

Drake shakes his head. “No, it’s not. It’s just not aggressive. But it’s actually a very useful passive power.”

“How do you know?”

“Professor Xavier has been sending everyone capable of it to pick up any mutants in crisis. Says we have time to mourn after our people are safe. Even Scott agrees. But because he’s busy tracking, he can’t go out and do introductions himself. So he’s been telling us the bare minimum of personal info. The least amount possible, I promise.”

His expression is so damn earnest. He genuinely feels bad about knowing the first thing about Stiles. It’s so innocent. Stiles wonders how Mr Drake would react if he told him a geriatric man studied and stalked all his friends and ultimately kidnapped half of them. He’d probably be horrified. And how deeply has Stiles sunk into insanity that he finds the idea pathetic, not compassionate? Drake’s supposed to be a mutant leader. He should be better than this tame quietness. He should be willing to do what he has to do, including kidnapping students that don’t want to learn. Gerard was a shitbag, but he got results.

Stiles steers the conversation away from the man’s sad inability to information gather. “So what do I do?”

“You plan.”

“I what?” Did he mean to say plane, like he can fly in a controlled vector? Stiles tried jumping off the roof and not falling, but planeing could be different.

“According to the professor, if you’re given a true set of parameters and you really concentrate, you have a kind of rapid thinking precognition that will let you spin through scenarios, envision their outcomes, and decide on the best one.”

“You’re telling me strategy is my mutant power?” What the everloving fuck!

Mr Drake interrupts here. Or maybe it’s just Bobby. If the Professor is sending out any able body maybe he’s not an adult full member. The idea actually makes Stiles feel better. It’s okay if he’s weak, if he’s new. “You look like you’re feeling a lot of things right now. Want to talk about it?”

“One: I really could have used an aggressive power, so that sucks. Two: can I get that in writing? Because no one is ever going to believe that catastrophizing and desperately planning fixes is my mutant power. My psychiatrist is going to be so pissed you’re encouraging my bad habits and anxiety.”

“You see a-?” Judging by expression, Bobby’s surprised. “We do have a new medic now. Jean died at the dam, but Scott says his brother knows the new guy, and that he’s good. He’ll be able to talk to you about if you really need human medication.”

Oh, what the fuck. Is Bobby some sort of clean living clean body asshole? Is he an anti-vaxxer too? Stiles rolls his eyes. “I have ADHD. I need meds.”

“You have what humans have told you is ADHD. But your power is seeing tiny glimpses of the future if you think fast enough. Your diagnosis could be part of that.”

“Whatever.” Stiles has seen himself off Adderall and it’s fun for absolutely no one.

“So that’s two thoughts. Anything else you wanna talk about?”

“Just, I guess, that: three, that actually makes sense to me. I do have a habit of picking up on what to do to make everyone safe. Deciding to take Lydia to the warehouse because she might get through to Jackson comes to mind. But I just thought I was smart. The chess player type. The Ron Weasley, if you will. It sucks that I’m not actually smarter than Scott, just cheating.”

“It’s not cheating to use a skill set. Everyone, mutant and human, is unique, right? Would you get pissed at a friend for winning a race because she’s faster than you and she shouldn’t use that ability?”

“No.” Stiles actually finds a lot of comfort in his Pack’s ability to be awesome.

Bobby crosses his arms, point proven. “So why is your skill set any different? At some point it’ll be really important to yourself or the people you care about that an event go perfectly.”

Yeah, like the next time a guy on the lacrosse team gets turned into something deadly.

“That’ll be your time to shine. But you need to be able to control yourself, and that’s why you’ll switch schools for a semester. Or longer, if you don’t feel safe coming back.”

There’s a difference between not feeling safe in Beacon Hills and wanting to leave. The former is very much true, but Stiles cannot freakin’ fathom the latter. His father is here. Scott’s here. Scott’s mom and Derek and Lydia and the betas are here. Who knows what kind of crap could go down in a whole semester? Five months is an eternity when in one day you can win a lacrosse game, get kidnapped, get beaten, have your decade long crush come into your bedroom for the first time, hit your enemy with a car, see someone die and get resurrected, and devour an entire triple layer chocolate cake in your Jeep to eat your misery. Stiles just can’t see mutant boarding school working for him.

There is another option though. At least if Anonymous is correct, and they usually are.

“Okay, so this is your pitch. The pitch to go to Xavier’s school and maybe become one of his X-Men, if I stay long enough. Is someone from the Brotherhood going to swing around and give theirs?”

“No, they won’t. And if they do, you won’t listen. You can’t. The Brotherhood stole my best friend,” Bobby says fiercely.

“How’d they do that?” Stiles is expecting a tale of woe and coercion. It’s not what he gets.

“When the pulse went off, he just left the jet. He didn’t come back. Logan said he saw him standing in the helicopter.”

“Why’d he leave the jet?” Maybe there’s still something sinister here.

“He wanted to help all the adults and kidnapped kids, but they told us to stay in the jet. Me and Rogue, she and I both knew it was important to listen.”

Stiles crosses his arms. “Lemme see if I’m getting this right. You thought it was more important to follow a request than save your friends. Some of whom were _little_ kids, single digit kids, if Anonymous is right. And because you decided to be a coward, your best friend faced the pulse alone, in the dirty snow, somewhere between a plane and a government co-opted dam? And after the pulse switched you didn’t bother to go looking for him? And you’re surprised he went with the option smart enough to understand loyalty?”

“They want mutant supremacy!”

And there go his arms flailing, almost of their own accord. It’s not Stiles’ fault. He’s got too many thoughts to contain them all in just words. “I don’t know if your school doesn’t have a history class, but I’ve spent the last week on Anonymous’s mutant sub-site. Between the time mutants stopped Russia nuclear bombing the US and the Americans tried to respond by blowing up the heroes, the time when they developed giant robots to exterminate the race, the mutant registry, because minorities signing their name and address to a list always works out well, and _last week_ when an elite task force was ordered to kill us all, again? Don’t you think it’s about time we start fighting for room?” 

From Stiles’ perspective a lot of humans are like hunters, bloodthirsty and xenophobic. Stiles knows what to do with hunters, Chris and Allison aside. Possibly even Allison included, since she did fucking shoot Erica and Boyd half a dozen times. He’s pretty sure that his fighting nature aligns better with the Brotherhood.

“I don’t think we should have to fight anyone,” Bobby replies.

“That’s a super nice high horse. Pacifism is really cute. Useless, but cute. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for cute. There’s shit going down in this town that you can’t understand, and it’s more pressing than any education you could suggest. And to deal with that shit as a pacifist?” Stiles laughs, a nasty barking laugh that makes Bobby recoil a little. “I’d be dead a few times over, by now. So no to pacifism towards the fuckin’ hunters, and no to pacifism to feral wolves, and if any flatscan motherfucker tries to start something? You better bet that that’ll be a no too.”

“Stiles-”

Stiles stands up, and glares hard enough at Bobby that it spurs the man to stand too. “Go help someone that wants it. Because it’s not like I’m blind, I get why some people could need you, could be on your side. It’s just not me.”

Bobby nods, stiffly. He’s probably not used to people denying him. He holds out his hand to shake though, and Stiles takes it. He can have manners as he’s throwing someone out on their ass.

“If you need us, your neighbour knows who to call.”

“Yeah. I won’t, but thanks.”

Bobby lets himself out. He doesn’t close the door behind him because the lock’s freakin’ frozen. Stiles will definitely have to deal with that. _After_ he calls Scott and tells him to come over, he has information and the urge to cuddle. Just the concept of abandoning Scott -to go to a boarding school, or the way Bobby did to the nameless best friend- has Stiles itchy and unsettled. Maybe he’ll plan on how to never leave Scott for his first active, aware demonstration of powers.


End file.
